I don't have a single stamina gem in my gear, its not really worth it at all right now - you don't need the extra health. 2% avoidance on the other hand, you always need.

For me, the answer is pretty obvious.

As I explained in the post, you can't simply reject any of these two stats simply based on a feeling or a hunch. Not only will it depend on the incoming damage itself, but it will also depend on the content you're doing (NM/HC), and the format (10/25).

On Lei Shi for example, avoidance is simply useless since she doesn't melee you at all; whereas, on a boss like Mel'jarak HC, avoidance is king since you're tanking up to 7 mobs that are vigorously melee'ing you.

What spec are you using ? Use the offensive spec (Dragon Roar, Blood Bath, Glyph of Incite, etc).
Use couple of DPS gear with Crit/Str, especially trinkets and a helmet with a Str+Crit damage Meta. Use a Str flask.

Don't be afraid to spam HS as well, as long as you're not in danger (below some 20% HP) - pop a CD if that happens, or a quick SBar.

What spec are you using ? Use the offensive spec (Dragon Roar, Blood Bath, Glyph of Incite, etc).

Im using that spec, i was contemplating 1-2 dps trinkets but damage is pretty sketchy as is (bit undergeared with 381 ilvl).
Spamming heroic strike to the point its gimping my survivability.
Was switching between stam and str flask but made little diff.

I'm bit lost tbh, feels like im "doing it right" but numbers just isn't there
Know its hard to help without a log

Im using that spec, i was contemplating 1-2 dps trinkets but damage is pretty sketchy as is (bit undergeared with 381 ilvl).
Spamming heroic strike to the point its gimping my survivability.
Was switching between stam and str flask but made little diff.

I'm bit lost tbh, feels like im "doing it right" but numbers just isn't there
Know its hard to help without a log

When I'm soaking cleave I actually go all out DPS gear. you can mitigate alot of damage by throwing up sBar for every cleave but that will ofc gimp your dps slightly due to no cleaves/HS. (actually it wont affect you that much, my cleaves and HSes only accounted for a total of 3.4% on one of our kills so you actually dont lose that much)

Are you hit/exp capped already? Missing attacks will obviously reduce your dps quite a bit, same with getting parried/dodged. The rest is just using Shield slam and revenge to its fullest extent with devastate as filler. Throw in a execute when possible, and stay inside the legcircles at all times(dmg increase thingy). For this fight str and crit will be your msot important dps stats and Defensive stance with some sBar is WAY enough for soaking. You certainly do not need to stack mitigation stats for it so if you have a decent dpsset you might as well use that.

I'm exp capped, but think you found my issue, i thought you got the damage buff from attacking the legs not being inside the circle. Which i barley, if ever was :P
Had a feeling i was doing something fundamentally wrong, was working my ass off lol.
ty

I'm exp capped, but think you found my issue, i thought you got the damage buff from attacking the legs not being inside the circle. Which i barley, if ever was :P
Had a feeling i was doing something fundamentally wrong, was working my ass off lol.
ty

Np jsut make sure you'll get hit by the cleave. It's quite a thin line to balance on especially when the buss decides to make sharp turns. Try to keep a small eye on your kiter and plan your movement in advance and you'll be fine.

As I explained in the post, you can't simply reject any of these two stats simply based on a feeling or a hunch. Not only will it depend on the incoming damage itself, but it will also depend on the content you're doing (NM/HC), and the format (10/25).

I'm not so sure I agree with your effective health argument though. EH meant a lot when we didn't have active mitigation (or not as much), but now that we have those choices the need for prioritizing EH is pretty small gear wise, the active mitigation abilities ARE your EH control (if you see what I mean).

Its quite funny how the mind works depending on how you look at things. Imagine there were 2 gems, and you only had 1 gem socket. You could put a 450 Stamina gem in, or 1770 Parry in there (Not effected by DR). I am sure the theorycrafters would go crazy and say that the 450 stamina gem is under itemized and its not worth it.

Its quite funny that you used Lei Shi as well, seeing as its the only boss in the entire tier that the nelf racial is useless for. Every attack you can prepare for and if magic attacks are your issue you can have a nice barrier ready and waiting for a 10k-170k+ shield on demand - this kind of puts your 7k health to shame a bit in my opinion which is why I have opted to not gem any stamina.

There's really no point in starting an argument here, ; ) As I said earlier both priorities are viable to some extent, and you'll always find arguments to back them up.

Perhaps you're a bit overgeared for the content you're presently doing ? This might explain why you prefer avoidance over Stamina, since pasted a certain amount of Health Pool for some content (usually normal modes), there's really no need anymore to use any Stamina gems or trinkets. However, this doesn't necessary mean that having that extra Stamina isn't more optimal.
There's a big difference between needing something to ''survive'' a fight, and wanting something else to be as ''optimal'' as possible for this same fight. You don't need it anymore, but it still does make you tougher, and most importantly easier to keep alive.

The sad truth is, if you have enough gear, you could simply go in with any optimization you want and still do well, since there's simply no true challenge anymore.
A really good tank once said : '' Hey son, since stats don't matter anyways, why not stack yourself some Stamina !'' This statement can be so true sometimes, : ) But yeah, I guess at the end of the day it's really a matter of ''taste''.

In any case, the Avoidance vs Stamina discussion has been going on for at least 6 years now (since TBC), and people always tend to end up with the same result : there's simply no clear maths to show that one is really better than the other.
For this reason, I'm not really that keen in jumping into it here, ; )

An advice I can give is, whatever you do, don't prioritize avoidance over your Hit and Expertise caps - it's really not worthed, and every decent simulation will show you why.
If you're Expertise hard capped and Hit capped, then you're really free to spend the rest of your stats in whatever you want, whether it's Stamina, Mastery, or Avoidance, since the truth is as long as you have an accurate and effective active mitigation rotation, there shouldn't be any notable difference in performance (expect for some rare exceptions).

For 10man normals + some odd heroics, i have found getting hit and exp caps most important. You can pool your rage much, MUCH better and reliably for shit about to come.
Atm i sit around 1400 Mastery Rating Why? Well my gear just dont really have that much mastery atm. I do mostly use Stam trinkets with onuse Mastery for misc / easy content. I sometimes feel like "damn if i had more Stamina i maybe would have not died for that bang" I might start gemming more Stamina to new gear pieces (Still having hit exp caps)

Just pointing out a thing here: Even if i do normal modes + some of the easier heroic ones, it isnt any bit easier than your full HC raids. That is because i raid with ppl who take gearing and the whole game bit more casually, so i need every bit and trick i have time to get, to not die.

I'm exp capped, but think you found my issue, i thought you got the damage buff from attacking the legs not being inside the circle. Which i barley, if ever was :P
Had a feeling i was doing something fundamentally wrong, was working my ass off lol.
ty

If your healers can manage it, imo best solution is to go DPS spec with DPS gear, but stay in Def stance for -25% DMG taken. We did it that way and i managed to net 80k+ DPS even with kiting the boss 2 times. And if you 3 heal you can, maybe, sit in Battle Stance.

I'm fairly sure even if that change makes it past PTR, it won't change anything. 10% is really too low, if it was some 20/30% then yes, definitely.
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for any bigger nerf, here, : ) I'd really like that nerf to simply go away in fact.

What will bring more importance to Mastery however is simply Mastery itself... By that I mean, thanks to the higher ilvl of T15 gear, we will be able to stack more efficiently Mastery, and perhaps even reach a high enough amount to make it a reliable stat again, since right now it's too penalizing to stack high enough - you end up loosing Expertise/Hit caps and drop too low in health.

I'm fairly sure even if that change makes it past PTR, it won't change anything. 10% is really too low, if it was some 20/30% then yes, definitely.
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for any bigger nerf, here, : ) I'd really like that nerf to simply go away in fact.

What will bring more importance to Mastery however is simply Mastery itself... By that I mean, thanks to the higher ilvl of T15 gear, we will be able to stack more efficiently Mastery, and perhaps even reach a high enough amount to make it a reliable stat again, since right now it's too penalizing to stack high enough - you end up loosing Expertise/Hit caps and drop too low in health.

I don't think that it will make anyone change their mind... people gemming sta on 500~510 gear will keep stacking it in T15. After all, if you need ~22500 mastery to reach 100% crit block, I don't think no one will be near reaching it T15, and people will find it's as unreliable when going from 70% to 80% as they feel is going from 50% to 60%.

I still think that using 2 sta trinkets is more than enough sta to go and stack mastery, though. It makes me stop using sta flask in most fights, having 600k health without the flask is enough for me.

If your healers can manage it, imo best solution is to go DPS spec with DPS gear, but stay in Def stance for -25% DMG taken. We did it that way and i managed to net 80k+ DPS even with kiting the boss 2 times. And if you 3 heal you can, maybe, sit in Battle Stance.

That still works on heroic ?
Was under the impression it doesnt due to last phase.

You only need 1 tank on the last phase. We killed it that way too, I respecced to arms and we went with one tank. It hitted too much for us to switch to zerker, so I switched from battle to defensive on each swipe.

PD: Swipe can be parried, so Die by the sword is perfect if you know you are not topped enough for the next swipe.

PD2: L Kebess, mayhaps you want to add this as a way to get a BiS list.

Anyone can set their own stat weights to get a list. The only thing that seems to be wrong is Sha-touched weapons. If anyone knows how to make it gem them with a 500 stat gem instead of a normal one...

I don't think that it will make anyone change their mind... people gemming sta on 500~510 gear will keep stacking it in T15. After all, if you need ~22500 mastery to reach 100% crit block, I don't think no one will be near reaching it T15, and people will find it's as unreliable when going from 70% to 80% as they feel is going from 50% to 60%.

Indeed, ''stamina lovers'' will always keep stacking stamina no matter what. But, I wouldn't be surprised to see the sort of transition we saw going from T11 to T12.

On T11 most people simply stacked Stam and tried to get a decent amount of Mastery to reach CTC soft cap (75% coverage). On T12 however, when it became possible to reach CTC, most people then started neglecting Stamina, and stacking Mastery instead where ever they could, to reach this CTC cap - even if it meant using a DPS trinket.

I think we'll see something similar to this on T15 - perhaps not right away, but at least towards the mid/end of the patch.

---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 07:23 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Espada

PD2: L Kebess, mayhaps you want to add this as a way to get a BiS list.

As you said, the thing about T11 -> T12 was that you could jump from 77.4% ctc to 102.4% (with >390 gear). Being always unhittable was very much worth the stamina. But in T15, it's very different. You simply will go from 60% crit block on SB to mayhaps 75%. Outside of Sblock you will still get full hits, and in Sblock you will still get non crit blocks. Plus, with more avoidance mastery will be getting worse, instead of better like T12. If someone says now that mastery is not reliable and prefer to gem stamina, they will say the same come T15, because the situation will be the same too. There won't be any threshold to reach yet.

I don't really understand this discussion to be honest, seeing how the vast majority of mechanics you are susceptible of dying to as a tank in this tier are magical while the return of mastery is incredibly low atm. The only way i could see a discussion about mastery even a little bit interesting would maybe be in terms of reforging versus dodge/parry, but then i think that energy and effort should probably be placed into actual gameplay if you want to mitigate more damage. Make sure that hit and expertise is (hard)capped and the next best thing is a bigger healthpool, which is pretty obvious when you experience the entirety of the content.

This is why the current recommended priority is : Hit > Exp > Stam > Mastery.
On this T14 tier, it's generally accepted that this is the way to go, mainly for the reasons you gave.

Will this change in T15, once we'll be able to stack enough Mastery to reach some 80/90% with an end game gear ? That's really the question. I believe more and more people, and perhaps even most people will then turn to Mastery rather than Stamina, as there's a big difference between having 40% Mastery and 80%.

At 40/50% your chance to critically block is simply too random (it's a complete gamble), and you really can't base a whole optimization on that.
At 80% it becomes extremely rare to NOT have a critical block, so rare that you can actually base your optimization on it, as long as you don't drop your healthpool to low in order to reach it, since you still won't be ''100%'' sure to CB everything.

It becomes a bit like Guardian Druid optimization. They have a high chance to dodge attacks when they use Savage Defense (some 60/70% on average right now on T14), but not a 100% chance. If they only had some 30/40% chance to dodge with their SD it simply wouldn't be reliable enough to base their whole optimization on it - they wouldn't be able to dodge enough and things would get too spiky for their healers.

In fact, some end game players have already started to try out this Mastery optimization (Grafarion, Kungen, etc...).

I guess only time will tell really.

---------------------------------------

Furthermore, there's a fundamental difference between ''normally'' blocking an attack and critically blocking it. With that I mean, once you've blocked an attack, generally you've reduced it enough to prevent any serious damage spike that might have resulted otherwise.

In that sense, a critical block is only a ''bonus'' really, and not necessary or mandatory to avoid serious damage spikes, that WILL inevitably result if you can't block anything at all. This is why right now we can neglect Mastery, and still perform well, and avoid damage spikes only with our normal blocks.

By this I mean, we absolutely don't need to reach 100% Mastery for it to ''suddenly'' become a reasonable/reliable stat, because the difference between a blocked attack and a critically blocked one isn't high enough to create any dangerous spike of damage -- the type we might see when we don't block anything at all for a while.

Thus being able to CB about 80% of blocked attacks, will really allow us to bring this ''bonus'' mechanism to a higher level, and greatly benefit from it, just like the Guardian druid benefits from his SD even though it doesn't give him a 100% Dodge chance.
At that level, those rare attacks that will only be ''normally'' blocked won't really matter or cause any trouble at all -- they will only slightly diminish the strength of an already really powerful CB mechanism.

In the end, Mastery for Protection Warriors, as most simulations will tell, is very powerful (much more than Stamina in most cases), BUT only if you can manage to get a really high amount of it.
The problem is right now, in order to get that high amount, we are forced to sacrifice too much. Forced to drop our HP too low, so low that we can't even manage to get the bare minimum anymore, and forced to go under our Expertise soft cap.
This is why on T14 the wise thing to do, is to try to have a good equilibrium between those two stats, and not just stack one of them.

Towards the mid/end of the next patch however, I truly believe we will be able to stack much more Mastery and neglect Stamina, and still not drop too low in HP;
all that thanks to the higher ilvl gear we'll get in T15.